Tascam DA-98
A four-rackspace DTRS machine that made confidence monitoring standard equipment and put sync on the motherboard instead of the options list.
Overview
The DA-98 is Tascam's third-generation modular digital multitrack. It records the same 8-track, 16-bit DTRS format as the DA-88, the DA-38 and the Sony PCM-800, so the tape is shared across machines. Mix (1997, p.116) reported a projected retail of $5,999 for the four-rackspace unit, with the RC-series remote offered as an option for either the DA-98 or the DA-88.
The DA-88 made owners buy sync as a card. The DA-98 ships with it built in. EQ (1998, p.96) put it plainly: unlike the à la carte approach of the DA-88, the DA-98's sync is not an optional card. So it arrives ready to lock to a house clock and to other transports, with no shopping trip first. Owners report the wordclock and video sync connections are BNC, with wordclock in, out and through, and the video and wordsync connectors terminate automatically. Below those sits an RS422 interface that conforms more fully to the Sony protocol, plus the standard three MIDI sockets and a parallel machine control port. Multiple units can be locked for up to 128 tracks of recording.
The headline feature, and the one Tascam's own advertising hammered in Mix (1997, p.19) and again in Mix (1997, p.41), is confidence monitoring. Press Confidence Mode and the machine plays back off the record head, so you hear what actually got printed. The DA-98 is billed as the only MDM with that capability.
Day-to-day operation is built around a four-line-by-20-character LCD and a menu system that reaches every parameter. EQ (1998, p.96) found the menus a welcome alternative to memorizing keystroke combinations for features an engineer rarely touches, though the same review judged the menu organization less than fully intuitive. The display also simplifies the advanced digital track-bouncing, copying and routing functions. Sound on Sound (December 1997, p.186) walked through the function-key architecture: Group 6 covers RS422 operation including machine emulation, record delays and track mapping from edit controllers, while Group 7 gathers the MIDI functions and the function-key modes.
For film and television work, the timecode facilities matter as much as the converters. Field documentation describes recording at 48.048 kHz with 30-frame timecode on a DA-98, so that the 0.1% slowdown to 48 kHz happens in telecine and the audio stays in the digital domain until the final mix. The same notes stress labeling such tapes clearly, because the workflow depends on everyone downstream knowing what they are holding.
Collectors and post houses still keep DA-98s around for the DTRS tape standard and the confidence heads. Service documentation lists the DA-98 alongside the DA-88, DA-38, DA-78HR and DA-98HR as a supported DTRS family. Parts and tape are the practical concerns. The format is long out of production, and the machines are old enough that transport maintenance is a fact of ownership.
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